White Sox legend and chronically underrated starting pitcher in the 1970s, Wilbur Wood, died Saturday at the age of 84.
The 17-year veteran came into his own after arriving on the South Side in 1966, first as a bullpen specialist and later as a throwback innings eater. In the process, he was named to three All-Star Games and finished in the Top 5 of the Cy Young voting in three consecutive years.
The key to Wood’s excellence was the knuckleball, which allowed him to throw an impressive 1,070 innings during his three Cy Young seasons. Those seasons produced a 70-50 record, 2.64 ERA/2.94 FIP, 142 games, 63 complete games, 19 shutouts and even a save – all told a 30.0 WAR. To put that value in perspective, only nine other pitchers in White Sox history have above 30.0 career WAR.
Wood’s 376 2/3 innings in 1972 rank 274th all-time (all but a handful of larger workloads, however, were from the 19th century) and the most since Grover Cleveland Alexander in 1917. Wood started 49 games that year, making up more than 30% of the club’s starts, and his innings pitched totaled more than 27% of the team’s starts. total loading innings.
Legend has it that Hall-of-Famer Hoyt Wilhelm and fellow pitcher Eddie Fisher welcomed Wood to the White Sox in 1966 with a career-changing gift: teaching the left-hander the knuckleball. But while Wood struggled over parts of four seasons in Boston and Pittsburgh (1-8, 4.13 ERA) and suddenly became a bullpen force in Chicago because of the pitch, the two veterans were more mentors who guided Wood than teachers who made him.
“I just decided to drop my curves and everything else and go 100% into the knuckleball,” Wood told our Mark Liptak in 2005. “I’d actually been throwing that pitch for a long time; I started using it in high school and semipro ball.”
After a “modest” 51-game debut (41 in relief) in 1967 that produced a 2.45 ERA, the “new knuckleballer” led the AL in appearances in each of the next three seasons. In two of those years (1968 and 1970), Wood led the AL in passing games and collected 52 saves from 1968-70.
In 1971, new White Sox manager Chuck Tanner and pitching coach Johnny Sain opted to move Wood into the starting rotation, and the left-hander thrived, posting an MLB-best 11.7 WAR and 1.91 ERA.
In Wood’s five prime years as a starter (1971-75), he averaged 336 1/3 innings per season. He led the majors in starts in four seasons and the AL in starts in all five. Amazingly, nearly 30% of his starts during that stretch consisted of two days or less of rest. The southpaw shrugged that off, though, with 99 complete games in that stretch.
What held back Wood’s career wasn’t the wear and tear of the heavy workload, but a line drive by Ron LeFlore in Detroit on May 9, 1976. The hit shattered Wood’s kneecap and ended his season. But true to form, Wood had completed five of his six starts to that point, with a 2.24 ERA.
Wood returned in 1977 and 1978 and started a total of 45 games, but his ERA rose to 5.11 in the two seasons. He hit free agency after the 1978 season, and when no team called him up to eat some innings in 1979, Wood’s career was over at age 37.
After his baseball career, Wood worked in various sales positions. Around the turn of the century, he was named to the White Sox All-Century Team.
According to JAWS calculations measuring peak value, Wood is the 106th best starting pitcher in baseball history. His 51.7 career WAR with the White Sox ranks him as the fourth-best pitcher and seventh-best player in team history. His 50.0 career WAR overall ranks 320th in baseball history, tied with Roy Oswalt. Yet Wood never received more than 7% support for Hall of Fame election.
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